MacFadden & Thorpe

MacFadden & Thorpe MacFadden & Thorpe is a graphic design studio based in northern California

07/22/2026

SAN FRANCISCO ART BOOK FAIR turns 10 🎉 We’re proud to have designed the identity and visual system for this year’s Anniversary edition — doors open tomorrow, July 23.
Back in 2019, we designed the Fair’s system and it remains one of our all-time favorite projects. Working for the fair is not just about the opportunity to go hard graphically, but the pleasure of working with the amazing team that puts the fair together, the exhibitors bringing fantastic publications and prints, and the thousands of attendees who come in style, ready to support independent publishers. It’s truly one of the best events of the year, and so when Jamie Alexander of PARK LIFE called us in January and asked if we’d like to be a part of this anniversary, we were like, Hell Yes!
More to come after the show, but we just want to thank Jamie, Lisa Ellsworth, Emma Cooper, Luca Antonucci, and the rest of the SFABF team for helping bring this all together. Now go get some books!

Cinco! THE QUARTERLY REPORT, ISSUE NO. 5 is launching this weekend at the LA Art Book Fair in Pasadena this weekend May...
05/06/2026

Cinco!
THE QUARTERLY REPORT, ISSUE NO. 5 is launching this weekend at the LA Art Book Fair in Pasadena this weekend May 7-10. You can get it at the fair or online at TheQuarterlyReport.com

Contributors: 
 
 Kate Sweeney
 Mila De La Torre 
  Griff Williams
 Matt Muir
 Tauba Auerbach
 Sarah Hotchkiss
     Mike Simpson
 Rita Bullwinkel

VCS Riso! For this year’s symposium we decided to do a run of Riso posters at the school FlatLab. With Riso printing y...
04/09/2026

VCS Riso!

For this year’s symposium we decided to do a run of Riso posters at the school FlatLab. With Riso printing you print each spot color one layer at a time, and since there wasn’t an available green in the lab to match our original design, we overprinted layers of yellow and kelly green to approximate it. Then added in a red tongue and topped it all off with black. Perfect registration was elusive!

Identity/Poster design for the 2026 Symposium. This is the 10th year (!) we’ve done the system for VCS, and for the pas...
04/08/2026

Identity/Poster design for the 2026 Symposium. This is the 10th year (!) we’ve done the system for VCS, and for the past couple the students have mood-boarded out themes and ideas for us, which has been fun and a little wild. Flip through for a few of the reference images they provided, which we threw into our design blender to come out with this year’s stuff. The dog is named Wolfgang and he’s very real and presumably in charge.

riday field trip to the Bay Model in Sausalito. The Bay Model is exactly what it sounds like—a scale model of the San Fr...
03/28/2026

riday field trip to the Bay Model in Sausalito.

The Bay Model is exactly what it sounds like—a scale model of the San Francisco Bay, stretching from the Pacific Ocean deep into the Sacramento Delta, and originally used by the Army Core of Engineers to study tidal flows, sediment, and the impact of landfill and infrastructure on the region’s waterways. It was built 1957 and expanded in 1966-69, and wow, it’s huge! The model uses a series of hydraulic pumps to mimic the in-and-out flow of tides, and hundreds (maybe thousands?) of copper tabs inserted into the ‘seafloor’ which approximate friction of salt and fresh water colliding in the estuary. It’s all quite a monument to the ingenuity of science, engineering, and design.

Hotel Retro: now out from – Hotel Retro reproduces 330 vintage luggage labels from the Letterform Archive collection, a...
03/13/2026

Hotel Retro: now out from
– 
Hotel Retro reproduces 330 vintage luggage labels from the Letterform Archive collection, and Yes! they are actually stickers that you can peal off and put on your own luggage, laptop, scrapbook, fridge, heirloom s***f box, etc etc. So much incredible design in here from the golden age of travel.
– 
Big thanks to .chau for bringing us in on this. And to Lucy, Stephen, Molly, Mason & Rob at LA for making this beautiful book happen.

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Corte Madera, CA
94925

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Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm

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